Sports

Nuggets' Shaw speaks the truth

Nuggets coach not holding back in media, with players

Nuggets guard Evan Fournier listens to coach Brian Shaw in a game against the Nets on Thursday in Denver. The Nuggets are 25-32 in Shaw's first season. (Karl Gehring / THE DENVER POST)

Last week, a mini-storm brewed in Los Angeles.

Lakers star forward Pau Gasol publicly questioned the team's discipline level after a loss to Indiana. Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni fumed, then shot back through the media that Gasol should keep those comments in-house.

D'Antoni wasn't fully familiar with the Laker Way, where speaking your mind isn't out of bounds. Gasol has lived it the past seven seasons.

Nuggets coach Brian Shaw grew up in that environment.

He played for and coached with Phil Jackson, whose public flogging of his players through the media became the stuff of legend and at times rubbed his stars the wrong way. Of all of the traits that were examined upon Shaw's arrival as the head coach of the Nuggets last summer, brutal honesty wasn't one of them.

It is now.

In the past two weeks, in the aftermath of the Broncos' Super Bowl loss and the Avalanche being sidelined during to the Olympics, the Nuggets were in the white-hot media spotlight. Though he had been candid after every loss before that, a new audience was just focusing in. And after the Nuggets' lopsided loss at Chicago on Feb. 21, those new eyes got to see Shaw was in rare form.

"I told our team I wish paychecks were predicated on night-to-night performance," he said that night. "So, if you play like a star on a given night, then you get paid like a star. If you play like an uninspired player, then either you don't get paid or you get paid like an uninspired player. And you can't just pick and choose when you want."

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In subsequent radio interviews, Shaw raised more eyebrows, detailing instances when he had players go back on the plane to clean it.

"My mother used to always tell me that my mouth was going to get me in trouble," Shaw told The Denver Post. "But I've always been one ... I say it like it is. Whether it's to them, or (media) or whatever."

And, he's not about to change.

"It's not on my agenda to say I'm going to send a message through this avenue to get the point across," Shaw said. "I cut out the middleman. I'm going to tell them, and then if you guys ask me, 'What was the vibe?' I'm going to come out and tell you guys. And if you guys go back and say, 'Coach said this,' they are going to say, 'Yeah, he told us that, too.' "

Shaw's policy of not telling the media anything he hasn't told a player, or the team, is the main reason his players seem to accept it.

"He says the same thing to us," Nuggets guard Ty Lawson said. "I don't have a problem with it."

Forward Wilson Chandler has had many of Shaw's harshest criticisms expressed through the media brought back to him by friends who wants to know if it rubs him the wrong way.

"No," he said. "I can't get mad when he speaks the truth."

Shaw has not been told to tone it down by Nuggets management. And none of the players has expressed concern or frustration over it.

"No one has come back and said, 'Coach, I really don't appreciate you saying this,' " Shaw said. "I didn't say, 'This particular guy left trash on the plane, and I made him go back on and get it.' I said as a team we do that, and I hold the whole team accountable when one guy does it."

The one rule Shaw lives by is not singling out any player. That's not a rule Jackson always adhered to.

"My last four years with Phil Jackson, he called players out by name," Shaw said. "And our team was that way. If you recall, Kobe (Bryant) used to call Shaq (O'Neal) fat and out of shape. Phil would say as big as Shaq is, he should get more rebounds. I just believe in brutal honesty. And I don't think that I have particularly called out anybody by name. When I'm saying it, I'm saying it as a group — us as a team. And it starts with the little things, building the right habits."

Asked if he will consider a softer approach, Shaw said: "I don't know that I can. If I make a strategic mistake during a game, I'm open to the criticism that comes from the mistake that I made, because I made it; nobody else did."

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